Thursday, August 7, 2014

Twitch Plays Pokemon is a collaboration/war among Twitch viewers to navigate various Pokemon games via a mass of collective input, but now you can watch a fish play through the first generation all on its own. Created in 24 hours for HackNY, Fish Plays Pokemon uses motion tracking to detect where a Betta fish, Grayson Hopper, is in his tank, which is divided into a grid with each square corresponding to an input.

The game has been going for 130+ hours. Grayson has obtained a Charmander, nicknamed AAAABBK, and has defeated his rival. Not bad for a fish. At the moment, he's spending most of his playtime staring at the wall in the starting bedroom. Things are moving slow, and Mr. Hopper could theoretically die before ever reaching Pewter City, so they're considering setting up a site where users can link their own fish streams, including it in the controlling. It'll be interesting to see how long, if ever, it takes for Grayson or a network of fish take to play through the entire game.